New works shine in teen playwrights fest

Lyceum Theatre showcases four new 'winners' at annual program

Heartache and humor, loss and healing abound in four new works by teen writers selected and showcased through the California Young Playwrights Contest. Yet some of the most moving drama during Saturday night’s opening of the 28th Plays By Young Writers at the Lyceum Stage was not in the plays.

During breaks in the onstage action, the audience learned that 18-year old Kimberly Bell had never been to a play before she wrote her sharply observed and inspiring script “A Broken Promise.” Owen Stone experienced his own personal loss before— as a 15-year old—he wrote his “The Family Table” about a family devastated by the death of a child.

High schooler Elana Zeltser, who created the smartly titled, time-travelling “Arc,” watched her play develop between commuting for rehearsals as an actor in a different production in Los Angeles. And Mimi Nicole, 18, whose “A Day in the Life” closed the program, simply couldn’t be there; she was already studying acting on scholarship in England.

Zeltser’s inventive “Arc” centers on a disaffected and depressed teen Kacey (Nicolette Shutty) who encounters the imprisoned 19-year old Joan of Arc (Mariel Higuera). Under Liz Shipman’s direction, the staging highlights the parallels between the two teens who experience “visions,” while also playing up the comedy when Joan wants to try on nail polish or practice some funky chicken dance moves.

Festival of Plays by Young Writers

When: Through Feb. 9

Program A: Staged reading of “Help There’s a Stranger Living Upstairs” and full productions of “Arc” and “The Family Table” are at 10 a.m. Feb. 5 and 7; 7:30 p.m. Feb. 8 and 2 p.m. Feb. 9.

Program B: Staged reading of “The Trial of Wolf vs. Pig” and full productions of “A Broken Promise” and “A Day in the Life” at 10 a.m. Feb. 6 and 8 and 7:30 p.m. Feb. 9.

Bell’s “A Broken Promise” charts the conflict in smart Rosie (Kathleen Calvin) between her own aspirations and the ’hood lifestyle that threatens to engulf her as it did her parents who met violent ends. It’s an ambitious and touching tale with a likable and complicated heroine at the center. Bell has a good ear and eye for how real people, including guys, actually talk and behave. Kaja Amado Dunn directed.

In “The Family Table,” again directed by Shipman, writer Stone skips from past to present dramatizing the disintegration of a grieving mother after the death of her young son. Meanwhile, over the years, the father manages to hold himself together and stay close to his surviving son and daughter (Sidney Franklin and Nicolette Shutty, both excellent).

Nicole’s “A Day in the Life,” in a lively staging by Dunn, offered shrewd comic relief to close the program. Both absurdist and laced with dark humor, her play opens with a young man, simply named He (Christopher Murphy), sound asleep. Behind him, six actors in school uniforms are arrayed on individual platforms, like circus animals ready to perform.

What they perform, aside from some cool dance moves, is a battle royal for control of He’s waking life. In other words, these characters are aspects of his psyche; they visualize the hormonally-charged, mood-swinging volatility of so many teens before they become (perhaps!) integrated adults.

The little play is sheer fun, though. In lively kidspeak, He’s sex drive (the wonderful Dylan Hoffinger) fights for dominance with his public personality (Veronica Burgess), his brain (Caitie Grady), his heart (Julio Jacobo) and survival instinct (Steve Hohman).

Pretty clearly for all four of these winners, half the battle is already won; writing is their path into self-knowledge and adult accomplishment.

Anne Marie Welsh, a former dance and theater critic for U-T San Diego, is a San Diego arts writer.